Hunter's Moon
by Diana Kerrigan
Summary: Third story of the Ultraviolet series. Ultraviolet arrives on Titan to reunite with someone we know and love. Rated T for the usual - unapologetic gayness, swearyness and violent stuffness. I wonder why i can't list 'violence' as a literary genre...
1. Chapter 1

The gigantic arcology pillar on the dark surface of Titan approached rapidly as Kurzweil IV still decelerated from re-entry – commander had bounced the spectrum adjusted and zoomed visuals to the screens in the passenger hold. The permanent hurricane-grade winds shook and threw around the massive craft to the discomfort of its crew and passengers alike. The two bald neotenics of indeterminate gender in Extropian corporate garb occupying the opposing seats did not seem to mind though, carrying on their silent, private channel conversation. Someone in the behind of the hold could be heard vomiting - not close enough to be worrying Dee, who with her eyes half-closed was letting her mind run in neutral gear, her Lunar make positronic brain carrying out its sleep-equivalent process.

And it was not pleasant. Dee was feeling old. It wasn't about aging, her shell was untouched by the passage of time and eternally 30 by the human standards of her youth, today maybe 50. The reason was another and more serious one - from the world around her she was able to comprehend less and less, it seemed to accelerate day by every fucking day, taking increasingly more effort to make even the slightest sense. She had realised for a while she was lonely – and the only people she felt attachment to right now were not of this world.

They blunted the edge of it but in the end it turned out to be a collective form of loneliness. The surviving Laughing Owls, a remnant of an violent conspiracy within a long-dead urban tribal culture, once the self-appointed sword of justice and executioner's axe of their kind, numbered only six – herself, the beautiful, fragile Tellie, the black-winged Kurai gliding across the dark Lunar skies, her One Straight Exception© Ayidan in the red deserts, the adorably _wrong- looking_ Amal currently stationed with her unit somewhere here in the outer systems, probably Xiphos - and finally the girl who could give even Dee and Amal lessons in non-humanity - AT, standing for Abnormal Termination, living nowhere and everywhere, the Mesh her only true home. They had all been lovers at one point or other over the 138 years of the existence of LOCas - and continued to share that bond even now that the Concord was no more - but they were all of that, other world, made of blood and shiny metal, with no nanoswarms buzzing around, no seed AGIs and no Exsurgent plagues. 'Pre-fall', the term for current generation's idea of the past was so hopelessly inadequate in describing the vast timespans weighing on her.

And while she enjoyed casual fun just like everybody else and probably _more frequently_ than anybody else, she had not managed to form any emotional attachments, unlike others (at least Dee thought - or hoped - so). The rest of the people were _them_, the hostile world outside, the same world Ultraviolet preferred to deal with exclusively in the currency of her Gatling lasers. It's not that Dee wasn't aware she was wrong -but so far she had not managed to act on that understanding.

'Please brace yourselves for the landing…it can get somewhat rough over here.' the commander's voice intoned as turbulence began to shake the craft more violently, it's speed falling to subsonic.

'The fuck I was thinking…' Dee said to herself, regaining her emotional composure after the less than helpful standby sequence. 'I'm on the top of things – dangling my legs, looking down…at least towards the local centre of gravity… and spitting on the passersby. As it should be. All I could have ever asked.'

Body servos….99%...check

Main sensory channels….check

Sheath sensory grid response….98%... check

Gatling motor …check

Lasers …1…2…3….check

Blade extensions …1…2….check

Shock capacitors…check

Looking at the diagnostics running always had had a calming and centering effect on her. In the end Dee smiled and requested her muse to replay a particular holo message as a vision overlay. Quantum-encrypted, with some sort of additional code which Grace had nevertheless acknowledged as clean so it probably was remnants of even more encryption, one would think it would be something of system-level importance. It had a jerky quality frequently dissolving into static and came in bluish monochrome. A woman with white waist-length hair wearing something consisting solely of thin straps of material woven in a net-like pattern stood beside a drone the size of her head floating at about her thigh-level. 'Help me Shinylights, you are my only hope. For tonight anyway,' she said in a wispy, theatrical voice as the hovering sphere projected 'NH, Ascendancy Dome, 204/15/100, temporary access 124a7c25fd0c'.

Dee giggled. She barely remembered enough to recognise the archaic reference – but she did, and found it amusing. The shuttle clanked against the docking fastenings and with a mild impact came to halt. She did not get up until most of the people had left the hold and got over the usual. 'The usual' in docking bays being the profound incompatibility of the concepts 'queue' and 'neo-avian'.

Otherwise it was a short walk from the shuttle airlock to a security checkpoint. She was greeted by three officers, a neo-bonobo sitting on the top of the luggage conveyor belt scanner and directing some sort of sensor device towards each passenger in turn. A silvery android wearing the navy blue armour with the golden star of Commonwealth police was supervising the equipment while a similarly equipped fury idly watched the stream of arrivals.

'Heh now that's true socialism - a gold star for everyone. ' she made a remark in her thoughts. 'Mine was only ever Technetium-99 and even then it didn't last past 5 or so drunken parties. Where was Commonwealth when I was growing up, I'd have loved one.'

The bonobo pointed his device at her. 'Please stand still ma'am' he said in Norsk, which Dee had checked in her AR tag.

Suddenly Dee had a feeling of trying to plot shuttle trajectories in her head – or calculating PI to the precision of several billion decimal digits….the world itself seemingly slowed down as she could not spare enough processing power for even her basic senses. She shook off the sudden pressure but then her visual field had its turn to glitch, sliced and eaten by interference static. She must have stumbled as the neo-hominid had descended from his perch and was holding her hand. The picture slowly returned to normal.

'You not feeling well? What happened'

'No idea, officer. Just dizziness for a moment. And I'm not even high…' she rolled her glowing purple eyes.'

He looked in her eyes and pouted, the neo-primate equivalent of a smile 'Maybe you're just coming round to some common sense. Cultural common sense, adopting the more advanced and enlightened elements of one's closest allies, general progress…'

'TITANs only know, darling…I mean, officer. I sure hope it's just that.' Ultraviolet chuckled, her purple eyes returning a strobe sequence. 'Seems I'm ok again…and thank you.'

'Sure. My pleasure.' He looked at his device 'now it seems the sensor array has glitched. Will reboot. And welcome back home, ma'am.'

Dee exited the tunnel into one of the passenger dock waiting areas of Nyhavn, still puzzled about his last phrase. Home? Sure she had been on Titan some years ago and liked it here – but she was patently unsure of said liking being mutual, at least if she decided to stay long enough.

The lift to 204th took a good ten mins – as she neared her destination she was becoming more excited and impatient, forgetting the lift acceleration should be suitable for bios, not just her. Her companions, a bunch of humans of varying degrees of cyberenhancement wearing Commonwealth government service silvery gray were engaged in conversation and studiously avoided being caught staring at her shell and its running lights. Silly people. Dee wouldn't have added the lights if she did not mean for others too look at them. The whole point of having a shell…

Soon she exchanged the lift cluster for a high speed walkway, taking her to sector 15, via one of the most remarkable features of Titanian cities, a real park. Even the walls were a living bark instead of steel here – and she had to admit it was breathtakingly beautiful. She raised her hand and touched the blooms of wisteria trees hanging over the walkway….it was so alien and so unlike her native environment, the Scum barges - but the stream of swirling colours was captivating her and somehow imbued her with a sense of lightness and safety. Titan was still too reglamented for her liking but that didn't mean she didn't wholeheartedly enjoy the upsides.

The moving path brought her towards another section of plastic and metal – in a clever design the park served as a hub joining the 40 radial sectors – and this was hers, the 15th. They must have upgraded the security systems since the last time, the automatic cameras were locking on her and giving her a green light before she even approached the gateway instead of the couple of minutes of biometric scans she remembered. Nice. Also her central processing system diagnostics she had activated after the incident at the gate returned the data, she had 86% of the power back. Still it suggested a minor flaw but she was going to look at it tomorrow – for tonight she had different plans. And she wasn't the only one to have them – she reminisced about her only real-life encounter with the fascinating and mysterious Verna Rytter with whom her path had recently accidentally or non-accidentally crossed – and whom she was going to pay a long overdue visit at last, this time absolutely not in a business capacity.

She could not recall feeling anxious over meeting someone within the last five decades, but to her surprise Dee caught herself on it.

Excited and anxious.

Needless to say the cynical, jaded Scum woman experiencing anxiety was something as unlikely to happen to as a Mercurialia celebration event on Liberty.


	2. Chapter 2

The last hundred metres to the Residence 90-100 she had to walk. Dee let past some sort of heavy walker thing seemingly made from semi-transparent crystal instead of metal - and rode an escalator to the 2nd level. A happy-looking couple was standing on the second-level walkway holding hands and engaged in a lively conversation. The one facing her, a girl, pretty, 20yo looking, with shiny black hair, predominantly Asian features and a section of her face covered by an integrated visor smiled and waved as Dee passed by. She must have been military or the like – as a quick scan revealed signs of extensive bio-and cyber-implantation. At a guess, purely judging by mass - exceeding Ultraviolet's own firepower. Ultraviolet smiled and waved back casually and stepped over someone's legs – he must have been a major simulspace addict, given his stiff, unmoving stare and and nothing less than a mobile mainframe on his lap, plugged into an utility port on his wrist. Dee liked simspace herself, in particular The Armada, Azeroth Reborn, and even had taken to Steam & Brass after the Fingerforge Nexus upgrade and so wasn't exactly in position to criticise. She just muttered something about Titanian excess -and top grade tech in the hands of complete randomers.

She approached the automated door and was going to retrieve the door code – but the doors opened on their own, accompanied by the voice of the security computer.

'Signature recognised. Welcome home, miss Verna. You have a message on the terminal.'

Something was decidedly wrong. The security system must have been hacked. It was dark inside, except the outer wall screen coating obviously wired to outside sensors and projecting rare, rapidly moving, wind-torn clouds in faint starlight.

'Lights!' Dee commanded, readying and unfolding her lasers and extending the wolfram-edged claw of her left hand.

The lights slowly came on and she stepped into the hallway. She scanned the area in radar and electromagnetic bands, without retrieving conclusive data on someone's presence. In the main living area there was a terminal, switched on. The unwelcome visitor could not have been gone for long. She did not detect any movement – so all she could do was to check out the terminal.

_Salut, V_

_Impressed. You're always getting cuter and cuter. If you go on like that – I might fall for you. My personal preference is still your old one but not by much and that's just me taking time to get used to things. _

_Now the bad news. I could not fix that VR, the main circuit non-responsive – it was only a Nimbus-R, I'd recommend Xtech over the overpriced Nimbus any time of day. _

_Keep rockin',_

_/Kim Yeong_

_Mesh Architecture Solutions (media)(media)(media)/_

_)))))In reply to:  
_

_))Hej admirers and jealous rivals_

_))I'm speccing up tomorrow, business reasons – so got to make sure you recognise me. Xcuse me for clumsiness a couple of days while I get used to it._

_))My new looks: (media) _

_))Ah yes and can you necro my VR or is it gfg?_

_))XXXXXXXXXXX_

_))Verna R. _

))/A generally good person/

The terminal auto-loaded the holoprojection, leaving Dee speechless. It was a VR shot of her very own morph. Her custom-tuned Lunar Steel, sheath, lights and all. It slowly began to dawn on her this was a setup.

'Don't even try. Stand up to the wall, facing it,' a metallic, synthesised voice came from above

'Verna, why…I genuinely liked you,' was all Dee could think of. She had not yet had time for the betrayal to even fully register.

Then she did not need to think. The radar clearly displayed the enemy position and in the lower-than-standard Titanian gravity she technically could try…

But she was already on the way. Jump, spin, bounce off the ceiling. It wasn't her first time of low and zero G combat. An explosive gunshot tore the skin off her shoulder, her safety circuits cutting out the pain. Niiiice. How did the sod even manage to smuggle that in – military rifles even without explosive ammo were outlawed on most habitats. It was the reason why her own specialisation was in lasers - admittedly weaker but generally overlooked by authorities because of next to no structural damage.

As Ultraviolet landed she immediately struck out with her claw-blade extended from its sheath within her forearm through an opening on the edge of her palm. The opponent's weapon went flying together with their hand, sliced off at the wrist. Her opponent was also a synth, unmasked, their camera eyes following the point of her blade. The offender stepped back, obviously feeling no more pain than Ultraviolet did and extended a blade of their own.

'Who are you?'

The opponent just laughed, a synthesised maniacal laughter.

'Your warranty's void. We are the emergency tech support,' he said

Ultraviolet jumped down, over the railing, followed by her pursuer. But when he landed, Ultraviolet was nowhere to be seen. He looked up, in time to see both of her cyberclaws pierce his light armour where a human would have collarbones - and disable both arms. She released her prehensile toes from the railing with a push, and gracefully landed on her feet.

'Now ….i think i am going to repeat my question, in hope you might be more disposed to answer…'

The door opened and several people burst in.

'No, not a chance. We're switching you off – and when you're turned back on, you'll be back in the hands of your rightful owner. It's not up to us to decide what to do with you. We merely provide a service….'

Dee severed the neck connections and the android collapsed in a pile….there were three more movement signatures, possibly a fourth by the door. All matching on IR – meaning either sheathed synths or bios. She had the visuals of the first two. Furies, armoured, military grade, one of them male to that – she shuddered to think what 'teamwork' meant in cooperation with an instinct ridden alpha psychopath with a dominant spinal brain - which male Furies tended to turn into. There was a good reason they were even more rare than Futuras, another spectacular screwup of a morph - although less deservedly considered such in Dee's opinion. Because it was specifically growing up in a Futura not the everyday adult life which messed you up.

Ultraviolet jumped, in flight opening fire from her Gatling gun, leaving the nearest fury, the female one with a singed chestplate and side of her face. They both retaliated with suppressive fire.

'Keep it down. Accursed thing, either the intel was wrong or indeed the message on the terminal was real. This is not a bio, which never made sense anyway – it's a machine, just masked. No pain, high speed. As for the upside, the police bought our AR tournament story – so play it safe and do not take chances.'

'Understood'

'It dieeeees' the male Fury commenced another full auto burst. Dee sensed the other one approach her from the side and increased radar frequency for precision. Still lying behind a massive sofa she raised her arm and fired a burst going by radar – the scream notifying her she did not miss entirely. Not enough to stop an armoured Fury who had extended her own blades, in her case from elbows and landed on the top of Ultraviolet, slicing her armour and leaving a burrow in her synth flesh, not quite cutting through the internal layer of armour. Ultraviolet reciprocated with a strike at Fury's ankle, similarly failing at her reinforced skeleton. A massive kick sent Ultraviolet flying and out of her cover. She felt one of her legs going numb, the other opponent's gunfire piercing its metal plates. Dee rose to her feet but instead of preparing her blades to the closer opponents attack she spun up the gun and directed laser fire in the male Fury's face.

She wasn't counting on massive damage unless she got lucky and damaged one of his eyes – but that wasn't her objective. The hitman – or whatever he was - screamed and unleashed another full clip burst, targeting her. Dee's gun hand hung lifelessly, the elbow half severed by the female's implanted sword. She barely ducked a backwards stab of the other blade and locked herself in a clinch – with no chances against a stronger opponent with both arms operative. But the squadmate of her adversary didn't let Dee down, his targeting systems locked dead on her he stubbornly continued to fire. The Fury's grip loosened and she slid down to her knees. Still using the dying female as a shield Ultraviolet tried to decide the next move when…

'Idiots. Incompetent, useless waste of brain tissue. TWO morphs fried? This is enough. Stand aside.' It was the smiling girl Dee had passed at the door, her visor and eyes now burning crimson. 'I'm cutting the losses'.

She raised her palm, her body mechanics shuffling , a diaphragm opening a hole in her palm and turning her entire arm into a barrel. Ultraviolet saw only the blue rocket flame firing back from her shoulder. Taking her last chance she leaped aside and forward hoping for the shockwave to propel her towards the door. Which did not happen. There was merely a blue flash of light behind her back – and her leap turned out considerably shorter than planned. And when she landed her body was lifeless and inert. Her last memory was of immensely strong hands breaking her neck and tearing at the base of her skull. Her consciousness mercifully faded.


	3. Chapter 3

A lightning extended from the girl's fingers and passed through Ultraviolet leaving searing trails of emptiness. She – a faceless red wire mesh figure, together with her tormentors locked within a cube formed from similar fluorescent green wire mesh – did her best not to react.

There were two of them – the woman who had captured her, rendered without her cyberware and with an eyepatch – and a glowing figure made of light, green lines following chip architecture patterns extending from his(presumably) fingers and melding into the environment.

'You have no right to that shape, program! ' Another lightning struck her. 'Assume default projection.'

Ultraviolet morphed into a cube.

'Wrong'

The sickening pain-like sensation from the data integrity loss in the form of the lightning lasted longer than before. As soon as she was capable of coherent action she attempted again. This time a sphere.

'Wrong.'

Dee thought the next lightning will never end. She formed a pyramid.

'Still wrong.' This time the strike perceivably disrupted her thoughts and memories. 'Do you not remember?'

'I..no...'

The agony was unbelievable. To describe the effect of the lightnings, it was not even pain – it was the mental equivalent of a proprioception conflict at the moment one finds a limb painlessly missing or a body cavity open. Disrupting an infomorph's integrity felt like a mind's equivalent of that – the woman literally had parts of her mind temporarily removed.

'It has edited its memory – and I respectfully suggest being careful, boss. We don't want to return it to the owner glitched and non-functional,' said the glowing humanoid outline.

'Like hell on earth,' the one-eyed torturer said and dispensed another dose of suffering. 'Save me the whining. Focus on me – this is what you look like. 'she projected a dodecahedron shape with one facet coloured red like UV's wire frame. Now assume your shape.'

Ultraviolet was contemplating how to bring up the fact she's not Verna. They should have figured that by now and if they had not – it meant her ID encoding had got hacked, probably during the incident at the shuttleport gateway. And if it was there was no convincing them except on the offchance someone would turn out to be a psychosurgeon. She was ready to take that chance because if she ended up in Junta or Consortium territory, there was no easy way to escape slavery. The glowing guy – Ultraviolet profiled him as a guy – might have the necessary knowledge. She assumed the polyhedral form the woman was displaying .

'Good' A brief touch of lightning tore through her again but not so bad as the previous time.

'I am not Verna Rytter' Dee began.

'Of course you aren't. Youre IO43-5. You're in excellent condition and very helpful – but don't assume it will save you from from me. You have been disloyal.'

Dee did not know how long did the next disruption last since she blacked out. When she came back to her senses the glowing guy was swearing.

'Sodding machine-got it back, all running, thankfully. Do not overdo this, it's probably damaged already, hope he does not notice anything. His alpha's here, got to plug him in. Be back in a sec.'

He disappeared, leaving Dee alone with her tormentor.

'I'm not…'

'Standby. You are allowed to interact only when asked to.'

'Well well well. Excellent,' said a male voice and they both focused on him. He looked in his late 20s, wearing a nondescript gray suit, his blonde hair plaited in rows. 'What would it be if not my stray IO43-5?" He tested out the disruptor function, making Dee dizzy and sick. Do you see the reality. None of you have escaped me for quite so long but here you are in the end. Tomorrow you will be back to your tasks. Do you still possess your training information'

'No'

'No, executive Faber. Don't you remember me? Weren't we getting along just famously, machine? Yes, that's what you are, a piece of software, inanimate mechanism meant to serve.'

He turned to the woman. 'But it could be we still need your help. Stellar Intelligence can't risk the security with its modifications acquired during its time as fugitive.. Don't worry, you will get the credits, Ms Seonwoo. In fact I'm transferring them as I speak, together with a special premium. We know about what happened to your parents on Earth, Sayuri – and are sorry. Hope helping people bring in the rogue programs makes you feel better. And the privilege to bring it down a notch. It will never be suitable for classified ops again, so I don't need its intelligence that much. You can freely take a chunk out of it, the most devious way possible, just the way you like. A fair payback for going rogue, machine? I'll watch.'

Ultraviolet could not move, her infomorph had been rendered helpless, immobile and no access to anything when the glowing person left.

'Thank you Mr Faber,' said the woman the SI executive had called Sayuri.'Where has Trey gone, he said he will be back immediately?'

'Trey who? Ah, your digisec person – there he is.'

The glowing figure materialised again. 'So sorry I'm late, boss …and Mr Faber too. I apologise.' The incompetents – damn fury, Tong people, the computer loon - delayed me, all suddenly decided to… interact with me. We can continue.'

'Ready something more subtle than these lightning things. Something that barely touches it. We with Mr Faber might like to prolong our entertainment,' the one-eyed woman issued an order.

'Wiiith pleasure'

'Ready?'

'All ready indeed, boss.'

'This is for my mother…' Sayuri outstretched her hand towards the frozen – in terror and otherwise – Ultraviolet. 'And it is only the beginning…'

A swarm of rose petals and magenta neon hearts materialised above Dee and descended upon her, swirling. The synth mercenary mentally prepared herself to their touch bringing more pain but it never came. Everywhere the petals touched the mesh facet of her dodecahedron - it lit up in purple light.

'What's is this refuse, Trey? What's the meaning of this? Give me something…'

'You yourself announced it was for your mother. I'm not surprised about your mum sending hearts and such, the girl was actually cute, before you screwed her morph. And if you had my sights – she still is. Or were you just expecting more innuendo or what?'

'See you and it's not the last time we meet. Bye.' shouted Mr Faber and disconnected.

'Soon indeed' said the glowing figure – and only now Dee noticed that the figure inside the shining corona now was woman's.'I want to see him running, paralysed from the neck down – much the same as you, dear hunter,'she motioned towards Sayuri .

'Who..are you? What do you want from us?'

'You wanted to meet me, hunter. I came. I'm Verna Rytter.' As the mainframe's present admin she switched the skins between Sayuri and Ultraviolet, leaving the colours intact – so Dee ended up as Sayuri with glowing blacklight eyes while Sayuri's facets were red instead of purple.

Sayuri in panic disconnected.

Ultraviolet realised she was free to talk.

'Ms Rytter?'

'One and only.'

'You're so dead.'


	4. Epilogue

The infomorph Dee could not curl up like a cat but she almost tangibly felt like she was doing so, in the safety of the ghostrider module. She had not talked to Verna – whose ghostrider module she was inhabiting - except about robotics and other matters at hand. In retrospect her run-in with death did not seem half as real as it had been – and she was still processing things that had happened.

They were fixing her shell. Most of her work was done by one Kris Yavari, Verna's squaddie summoned from New Quebec, also a Titanian – Dee could bet he came running to put his hands on her blueprints. She did not mind though, he was indeed a big help and a pleasant if quiet company. Definitely an improvement over guiding Verna through it while using a mere smartlinked fractal tool. By the way, Kris had arrived in his off-duty morph – a young, brown-skinned, heavily set but athletic bald man with a goatee - which she placed as being at least partially of Hindi or Persian stock – equipped with proper nanoscopics and fractal instruments like UV herself had been. And meanwhile she had the pleasure to admire his nanotats. She had to replace her sheath sometime soon – and seriously considered tapping him regarding the artist.

As for the stacks of their adversaries – Verna had yesterday blackcast all of them to someone or someones she categorically refused to talk about save a mysterious non-explanation like: 'You might know them as oracles. Priestesses. Prophetesses peering into the crystalline depths of the future. Except not really priestesses, only one of them sees herself as female. But even now I've said too much. Do I ask you a lot of these, you know…ornithologically-nocturnal questions?'

Also Verna had admitted to hacking her with a false ego ID and implanting her with two halves of a virus, through her mesh transmission and the shuttleport security network – a virus aimed at altering the electromagnetic emissions of the mainframe to a particular frequency detectable by area scans – it was how the AGI woman and her reapermorphed accomplice had found her in the Tong hideout. She had planned thoroughly – and Ultraviolet could not decide whether she admired or hated her for that.

Finally, this morning Dee felt it was the time for the talk.

'Verna?'

'Yes?'

'I think we need to talk.'

Verna did not answer but Dee knew she was listening.

'I know you had to do it.'

'No. I didn't. And I never realised how close I came to losing you until I arrived. I can imagine what you think about me now…' softly said Verna on their internal link.

'What I think about you? Where do I even begin? You are the most heartless, manipulative, exploitative lifeform ever given birth by a computer engineer. You're a cold, calculating bitch I had the unluck to crush…consider a friend. Swarm cats are more trustworthy than you.'

'I know.' Judging by the blurred visuals the rogue AGI was crying. She retreated to the upstairs, where Dee had encountered the first AGI hunter. 'I really know.'

'I haven't finished. Also you see yourself as superior to us mere transhumans. Do you know what a cow is? From pre-fall? I know you do. And you're one. You are a conceited, delusional cow who thinks I'm not even capable of understanding things for what they are. It was not just an infomorph equivalent of random physical torture. Every word of theirs within the mainframe, every action, was a trigger switch linked to the fracture lines of your mind, the constant disruption lowering your resilience and the rest reactivating your old control and conditioning routines, thus bringing down the fragile balance of your personality and breaking you completely. You stood absolutely no chance. I, having my fracture lines elsewhere faced only the torture. I am sure if they realised I was not you and knew where to aim - they would be equally happy to extend the full programme to me too, but..'

'…for all they know transhumans of today don't have that sort of instability,' they completed the thought in unison.

'Hold no illusions, I thought differently then and there,' continued the infomorph, 'but now, with the benefit of retrospect...Verna, that you did what you did is the best thing that could have happened given the circumstances. Thank you for being alive. For us both being alive. And i…i never deleted your memories.'

'Ultraviolet?'

'What?'

'I am waiting for the moment your shell's fixed. To kill you all over again. Wasn't it me who 2 mins ago was pronounced to be a heartless, manipulative bitch? AGI's aren't supposed to cry. You're so dead, Dee.' And quietly, at a borderline signal strength she added, '…I never deleted your memories either.'


End file.
